Tagged: Hamish Paul Wilson

Hamish Paul Wilson started let me know of his porting of The Chzo Mythos to GNU/Linux at May 2010, and updated me on his progress at June 2010, now finally the porting is done and The Chzo Mythos is available for GNU/Linux free of charge !

Hamish Paul Wilson sent me this email today :After playing more than my fair share of email tag with several individuals, I am happy to announce the availability of The Chzo Mythos for GNU/Linux. Hosting is being provided by the always generous Ryan C. Gordon of icculus.org and Linux porting fame, who most kindly accepted my request for an icculus.org account. Although I did hope to have this done by the end of July and with the support of Yahtzee himself (I never was able to get a response), I am quite happy with the release and my new found hosting abilities. Thanks again to icculus for making this possible.

Upon playing I recommend everyone contact me with their thoughts and experiences. Specifically of interest would be information about how it ran on the various distributions it was being played on, as currently I have only been able to test them on Fedora 12 and Fedora 13. So all you Ubuntu, Debian, Mandriva, Suse, Slackware, Arch, or whatever the hell you are running people please send me a message!

From The Chzo Mytho GNU/Linux websiteThe Chzo Mythos GNU/Linux BinariesWhat is the Chzo Mythos?
Although he is probably more well known for his satirically negative game review series Zero Punctuation, Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw has had another identity for at least the past twelve years; that of a talented freeware game creator and designer. His works include the amateurish yet still enjoyable Arthur Yahtzee Trilogy, his first publicly released games from which his nickname is based. He would then go on to envision the Rob Blanc Trilogy, the wickedly funny game series which first made his name a household one, well, that is if you were a part of the amateur adventure scene at least. His next project, The Trials of Odysseus Kent, took a step into the lurid which would eventually lead to his most celebrated works and the subject of this website: The Chzo Mythos.
Originally styled after horror slasher films, the games later took on the character of an H.P Lovecraft novel. The first and most celebrated game of the series, 5 Days a Stranger, depicted the events that would later become known as the “Defoe Manor Incident”, as seen through the eyes of the eccentric cat burger known only as Trilby. From this modest beginning the series spans hundreds of years and entangles many different characters, from ancient Celtic druids, to freed African slaves, to land use authority investigators, and even starship counsellors. Each game in the series has its own unique setting, and each game offers a different view to of the universe and plot of the games. It is important for them to be played in order for the plot to make any sense however.

What does this have to do with GNU/Linux?
Although all four games, five if you include Trilby: The Art of Theft which serves merely as additional back-story for the Trilby character in the form of a stealth platformer, can be run native on GNU/Linux using the sadly closed source AGSLinux Interpreter, this was often a pain to set up and caused these great gaming gems to be inaccessible to a common user. I myself have taken up the role of packaging native GNU/Linux binaries of each of the games which is easy to use and enjoyable for anybody on any distribution. Keep in mind these are the Special Editions, so they will include extra features not included in the original freeware releases.
Unfortunately some of his older titles, which are my own personal favorites, are not applicable to be packaged, since the AGS interpreter can not run Rob Blanc or Odysseus since they were constructed with an older version of Adventure Game Studio. However, I can confirm that both Adventures in A Galaxy of Fabulous Wonderment and the 1213 series can be packaged at a later date. Arthur Yahtzee was built using Visual Basic 3 and could potentially be ran through WINE. I know Rob Blanc runs great through Dosbox, and I can only assume that Odysseus does as well.

What exactly are all the games?5 Days A Stranger:
A cat burglar breaks into a supposedly deserted country mansion, only to find himself imprisoned along with four strangers by a mysterious force. A nice nasty horror game with some murders and gore.7 Days A Skeptic:
The sequel to 5 Days A Stranger. Four hundred years into the future, the scoutship Mephistopheles and its crew of six discovers something it should have left alone.Trilby’s Notes:
Master thief turned paranormal investigator Trilby follows the trail of John DeFoe’s soul idol to a small hotel in Wales, where he discovers the dark history of the cursed wood.6 Days A Sacrifice:
Council inspector Theodore Dacabe is sent to investigate the headquarters of a fad religion and finds himself embroiled in the machinations of destiny.Trilby: The Art of Theft:
The eccentric British cat burglar Trilby is at large in an American city, robbing the rich to give to himself, but will his arrogance cause him to bite off more than he can chew?You can find more information about these and other great games hereDownload from here

Thanks Hamish Paul Wilson for the great ports and contribution to the GNU/Linux gaming !